


Bright Tethers Tear Us Down

by icarus_chained



Category: James Asher Vampire Series - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Demons, Honor, Love, Mages, Magic, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Prompt Fic, Spies & Secret Agents, Tragic Romance, damnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To love a demon could only damn them, they knew. And to love them could only damn the demon in turn. But it was too late for anything else.</p>
<p>Fantasy AU, though not too far removed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Tethers Tear Us Down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt, which actually wanted dragon!Ysidro. I went with a [Rakshasa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakshasa) instead, and then ... kind of got caught up with the tragic romance rather than the worldbuilding? My apologies -_-;

James stood at the tower windows, hands clasped lightly behind his back, watching the sweep of yellow stars that formed the city beneath them. The citadel was quiet around them, not even the alchemical college prone to stirring in the grave hours of the night, and the only noises were the soft susurration as Lydia sifted papers behind him and the thin scratching of her pen in the candlelight.

At least, until an archaic voice spoke softly from the shadows beside the door, and a pale, colourless figure dropped his cloak of illusion to step inside.

"Your pardon, Mistress." Simon bowed, inclining his head mostly to Lydia, who had dropped her pen in startlement, and less to James, who had found his hands knotting silently into fists as he turned. "Forgive my intrusion. I shall not disturb you for long."

"Simon!" Lydia exclaimed, sighing out a relieved breath and letting go of the small silver blade her hand had instinctively leapt to. "By the gods, Simon, give _warning_. The Ambassador warned us that there may be retribution. You've startled a year from me!"

The rakshasa blinked, long and slow, and turned to look at James, a dark question flickering in amber eyes. James, tired and pained, nodded his head.

"Demons are not alone in disliking foreign agents interfering in their power structures," he explained quietly, walking stiffly over to a chair beside Lydia and folding himself carefully down into it. The battle had half-killed him, he reflected wryly. It seemed most of them did, lately. Spies and clerks were not meant to go up against demons and evil spirits. That's what _mages_ were for. 

But, lucky him, he had been blackmailed into working for a rakshasa, the first documented human to do so and survive the experience. Mostly, it must be said, due more to said rakshasa's odd sense of honour more than any great skill or prowess of his own. In the process, Lydia and he had learned far more about the inner workings of the demon courts than most of the actual experts could claim. Which had resulted, somewhat inevitably, in a retired Imperial spy, his alchemist wife, and on occasion even the rakshasa himself, becoming embroiled in demonic plots from one end of the Empire to the other, and even beyond. 

Not all of that could be blamed on Simon, James admitted privately. As Lydia would say, knowledge once gained is not easily put down again. The habits from a lifetime in service died hard, even if technically he no longer played any official part in the game of empires.

Simon, he thought suddenly, did not even have that excuse. He looked at the demon, standing pale and bare of illusion in their room, in a citadel full of mages who would happily destroy him and alchemists who would happily bind him to a glass jar and flay him apart to see what forces moved within him. Simon, far from his own territory and the seat of his powers, interfering in the games and struggles of foreign cities. Anathema, to one of his kind. A break from all tradition, a break from everything Simon himself had described to them as the fundamental rules of his race. And yet, here he was, drawn to the same battles as they, wounded in their defense and indebted for the wounds they had borne in his. 

Not for the first time, James wondered why. Rakshasas were creatures of illusion and base hungers, demons who ate the flesh and drank the blood of any and all who crossed their path, dark spirits who wove illusion to mask their presence from those who would destroy them. He had seen Simon kill. He had seen the demon lure innocents into his path and threaten them, knew that Ysidro had eaten at least one a night since he'd known him. Monstrous, ever and always. An unclean shadow that haunted them. But hunger could not explain Simon's actions in their defense. Bloodlust could not explain the lengths to which he went, when their original deal was done long ago and there existed no more bonds between them.

Illusion might. He had thought of that. A long illusion, a legend spun to use them in some distant game, to make them Simon's more organically and more thoroughly than any temporary forcing. They had come to love Simon. He and Lydia both. Even knowing, even having _seen_ what he was. They had come to love him still, and act willingly in his defense, and James retained himself enough to realise that may have been the aim. That the demon had lured them with an illusion of honour, long and slow, and used it to slip pale hands inside them.

But if that was what Simon had done, there was no help for it now. Aching, battered and bruised and half-dead yet again, James sat in a mage tower above the city of Prykan, surrounded by a thousand people who would gladly cleanse Simon's taint from the world, and knew he would call none of them. More than that. Should any arrive unexpectedly, should any human force suddenly emerge to strike Simon down, James knew that he would move to stop them. That he would throw himself in front of the demon, as he had too often before, and give everything he had to preserve that monstrous life.

And Lydia, he knew, would throw herself right behind him.

"I ... am sorry," Simon murmured softly, his golden eyes flicking between James and Lydia, cataloguing their injuries and the threat of retribution they stood under for having tangled with demons yet again. He moved forwards, a hungry ghost drifting through their world, and touched himself lightly upon them in sympathy. "I thought only to remove myself before the Citadel forces made themselves known. I did not think they might be a threat to you also. Forgive me. I would come sooner had I realised."

James flinched, minutely, squeezing his eyes shut and reaching blindly for Lydia's hand, catching it and clinging to her strength beside him. The words speared him, an unerring dart through the pained tangle of his thoughts and the distant horror of his loyalties. Damn him, _damn_ him. At every turn, quiet and gentle, with that sad honour that had warned them honestly of his monstrousness, Simon pulled them back into his orbit. Offered loyalty, offered honour, offered the _lack_ of honour when it would spare them. Offered his blood and his body and even the fundaments of his nature, all to preserve them, all to hold them close against him. A demon of illusion, plying the echoes of honour to snare them close.

And worse, more terribly than any of it, James knew that Simon _meant_ it. That Simon longed for that honour perhaps more than he longed for anything short of life, that Simon saw in them ... a mirror, perhaps, of what he might have been, had he been less than monstrous. Simon loved them and desired them, not as tainted pawns to slide inexorably into the horror of his own existence, but as purer, shining things, things to love him despite and not because of what he was. Every move Simon made that bound them closer to him, Simon _regretted_. James knew that, felt it in his very bones.

And yet, Simon made those moves anyway. As helpless against his hunger for them as he was against that other hunger, the bloodlust that ruled his life. Simon broke himself upon them, destroyed himself a little more with every move he made to hold them close, even as they destroyed themselves for him in turn. Simon would die for them as much as they for him, and that was perhaps the most terrible part of all.

It should not be, James thought, that they could kill a demon by loving him, nor die by having him love them. It should not be love that destroyed them. But there was no help for it now. As with so much since that terrible night when a demon had slipped inside his home and forced him into a nightmare he had never been trained to face ... as with so much, there was no longer any choice.

"Thank you, Simon," Lydia said softly, beside him. His wife, his love, who walked beside him into darkness. James opened his eyes, her hand warm around his, and saw her holding Simon's with the other. Found their demon leaning close, pale and fragile-looking in the candlelight, his hand tethered by Lydia's and his golden eyes dark and pained on James'. Their victory hung stark behind them, and their damnation warm between them.

"I would not leave you undefended," the rakshasa said to them, soft and earnest, the illusion of honour and the desperate adoration of the damned. Meaning it, meaning every word, and ravaged with the knowledge that, even still, they were all a lie. "Mistress. James. I would not see you hurt."

And James glanced at Lydia, helpless and pained against the love he found echoed between them, and reached up to catch Simon's last hand with his own. Tethering them, all three, one damnation accepted together.

"Nor we you," he admitted, holding close his lives and his loves against all the horror around them. "We would not see you hurt either," he told Simon.

And knew, at the last, that he did not imagine the shamed leap of grief in a demon's eyes.


End file.
